PITTSBURGH — About 20 minutes after the Rangers had spilled onto the ice at MetLife Stadium to celebrate Artemi Panarin’s overtime goal to clinch a 6-5 win over the Islanders, Brock Nelson let out a deep sigh.
“This one feels like it’s gonna take a little bit right now, just given the circumstances of the day, the game, environment,” he said. “Take a little bit of time now to kind of just reflect, finish this day off, review it tomorrow and think about some areas where we can tidy up.
“And right now for us, it’s next game is the biggest game of the year. We gotta find a way to win it and string together a few.”
In a season overflowing with gut-punch losses, Sunday’s has a case for the worst.
The Islanders fumbled a pair of commanding leads over their archrivals, outdoors, on national television, in front of a crowd of nearly 80,000.
The dressing room was positively despondent, unable to put a happy face on leaving with just a point for the 14th time this season.
“Yeah, I mean f–k — I’m sorry — that doesn’t really matter,” Mathew Barzal said. “It was a big game, big atmosphere. Whether it’s a point or no point, sure it’s nice in the standings, but tonight was a big game.”
And now, there is no choice other than get up off the mat and try to snap what is now a three-game losing streak against the Penguins on Tuesday.
If you were to pinpoint where the Islanders’ season started to slip away, their first meeting against Pittsburgh — a stunning 7-0 loss at home in the first game back from the Christmas break — would be a prime candidate.
The Islanders are 6-10-5 since then, dropping like a rock from second in the Metropolitan Division to fifth. If they lose to the Penguins, Pittsburgh will be in prime position to jump them too.
Four of the next five games are on the road for the Islanders, with a home date against Tampa on Saturday splitting trips to Pittsburgh and St. Louis before they go to Dallas and Detroit.
If some kind of turnaround isn’t evident, justifying any kind of go-for-it addition at the trade deadline is going to become pretty tough, even for a front office that’s been as bullish about its chances as the Islanders.
The state of play after Sunday is the same as it’s been for some time.
The Islanders are a good week away from being in a playoff spot with the wind at their backs.
But there isn’t much to suggest a good week is right around the corner.
If the Islanders hadn’t lost so many games in similar fashion this year, Sunday would have the feel of a gut-check loss.
Instead, it feels like more confirmation of an identity this team has unwittingly allowed to creep in.
Long Island is where leads go to die.
There’s still time to change that.
But after a certain point, there’s no choice but to believe that a team is what it’s shown itself to be.
The Islanders are getting pretty close to that point.
And the circumstance around Sunday makes it a tougher loss to move on from than similar episodes against the Sharks, Hurricanes, Canucks, Devils or Bruins.
“When I look at the five-on-five, that’s the hockey we want to play and I felt we had a very good game,” coach Patrick Roy said. “We played at a good pace, we competed well, we had our chances, [Igor Shesterkin] made a great save on [Brock] Nelson midway through the third period. … To me it’s a very positive game for us.”
Roy is right that the five-on-five stats looked great for the Islanders, who had 67.81 percent of the expected goals, 63.16 percent of the high-danger chances and 61.4 percent of the shots while letting the game fall through their fingers.
Maybe that’s a sign that they’re close to figuring it out.
But the standings are what they are, and if a turnaround isn’t coming soon, there won’t be a way to fix that.